Essays and Tales

J >> Joseph Addison >> Essays and Tales

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It is, indeed, much easier to describe what is not humour than what
is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has
done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I
would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory, and,
by supposing Humour to be a person, deduce to him all his
qualifications, according to the following genealogy. Truth was the
founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was
the father of Wit, who married a lady of a collateral line called
Mirth, by whom he had issue Humour. Humour therefore being the
youngest of this illustrious family, and descended from parents of
such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his
temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn
habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress;
insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge,
and as jocular as a merry-andrew. But, as he has a great deal of
the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he never
fails to make his company laugh.

But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name
of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the
world; to the end that well-meaning persons may not be imposed upon
by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet with this
pretender, to look into his parentage, and to examine him strictly,
whether or no he be remotely allied to Truth, and lineally descended
from Good Sense; if not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They
may likewise distinguish him by a loud and excessive laughter, in
which he seldom gets his company to join with him. For as True
Humour generally looks serious while everybody laughs about him,
False Humour is always laughing whilst everybody about him looks
serious. I shall only add, if he has not in him a mixture of both
parents--that is, if he would pass for the offspring of Wit without
Mirth, or Mirth without Wit, you may conclude him to be altogether
spurious and a cheat.

The impostor of whom I am speaking descends originally from
Falsehood, who was the mother of Nonsense, who was brought to bed of
a son called Phrensy, who married one of the daughters of Folly,
commonly known by the name of Laughter, on whom he begot that
monstrous infant of which I have been here speaking. I shall set
down at length the genealogical table of False Humour, and, at the
same time, place under it the genealogy of True Humour, that the
reader may at one view behold their different pedigrees and
relations:-

Falsehood.
Nonsense.
Phrensy.--Laughter.
False Humour.

Truth.
Good Sense.
Wit.--Mirth,
Humour.

I might extend the allegory, by mentioning several of the children
of False Humour, who are more in number than the sands of the sea,
and might in particular enumerate the many sons and daughters which
he has begot in this island. But as this would be a very invidious
task, I shall only observe in general that False Humour differs from
the True as a monkey does from a man.

First of all, he is exceedingly given to little apish tricks and
buffooneries.

Secondly, he so much delights in mimicry, that it is all one to him
whether he exposes by it vice and folly, luxury and avarice; or, on
the contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty.

Thirdly, he is wonderfully unlucky, insomuch that he will bite the
hand that feeds him, and endeavour to ridicule both friends and foes
indifferently. For, having but small talents, he must be merry
where he can, not where he should.

Fourthly, Being entirely void of reason, he pursues no point either
of morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of
being so.

Fifthly, Being incapable of anything but mock representations, his
ridicule is always personal, and aimed at the vicious man, or the
writer; not at the vice, or at the writing.

I have here only pointed at the whole species of false humorists;
but, as one of my principal designs in this paper is to beat down
that malignant spirit which discovers itself in the writings of the
present age, I shall not scruple, for the future, to single out any
of the small wits that infest the world with such compositions as
are ill-natured, immoral, and absurd. This is the only exception
which I shall make to the general rule I have prescribed myself, of
attacking multitudes; since every honest man ought to look upon
himself as in a natural state of war with the libeller and
lampooner, and to annoy them wherever they fall in his way. This is
but retaliating upon them, and treating them as they treat others.

SA GA YEAN QUA RASH TOW'S IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON.

Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit.
JUV., Sat. xiv. 321.

Good taste and nature always speak the same.

When the four Indian kings were in this country about a twelvemonth
ago, I often mixed with the rabble, and followed them a whole day
together, being wonderfully struck with the sight of everything that
is new or uncommon. I have, since their departure, employed a
friend to make many inquiries of their landlord the upholsterer
relating to their manners and conversation, as also concerning the
remarks which they made in this country; for next to the forming a
right notion of such strangers, I should be desirous of learning
what ideas they have conceived of us.

The upholsterer finding my friend very inquisitive about these his
lodgers, brought him sometime since a little bundle of papers, which
he assured him were written by King Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow, and, as
he supposes, left behind by some mistake. These papers are now
translated, and contain abundance of very odd observations, which I
find this little fraternity of kings made during their stay in the
Isle of Great Britain. I shall present my reader with a short
specimen of them in this paper, and may perhaps communicate more to
him hereafter. In the article of London are the following words,
which without doubt are meant of the church of St. Paul

"On the most rising part of the town there stands a huge house, big
enough to contain the whole nation of which I am the king. Our good
brother E Tow O Koam, King of the Rivers, is of opinion it was made
by the hands of that great God to whom it is consecrated. The Kings
of Granajar and of the Six Nations believe that it was created with
the earth, and produced on the same day with the sun and moon. But
for my own part, by the best information that I could get of this
matter, I am apt to think that this prodigious pile was fashioned
into the shape it now bears by several tools and instruments, of
which they have a wonderful variety in this country. It was
probably at first a huge misshapen rock that grew upon the top of
the hill, which the natives of the country, after having cut into a
kind of regular figure, bored and hollowed with incredible pains and
industry, till they had wrought in it all those beautiful vaults and
caverns into which it is divided at this day. As soon as this rock
was thus curiously scooped to their liking, a prodigious number of
hands must have been employed in chipping the outside of it, which
is now as smooth as the surface of a pebble; and is in several
places hewn out into pillars that stand like the trunks of so many
trees bound about the top with garlands of leaves. It is probable
that when this great work was begun, which must have been many
hundred years ago, there was some religion among this people; for
they give it the name of a temple, and have a tradition that it was
designed for men to pay their devotion in. And indeed, there are
several reasons which make us think that the natives of this country
had formerly among them some sort of worship, for they set apart
every seventh day as sacred; but upon my going into one of these
holy houses on that day, I could not observe any circumstance of
devotion in their behaviour. There was, indeed, a man in black, who
was mounted above the rest, and seemed to utter some thing with a
great deal of vehemence; but as for those underneath him, instead of
paying their worship to the deity of the place, they were most of
them bowing and curtsying to one another, and a considerable number
of them fast asleep.

"The queen of the country appointed two men to attend us, that had
enough of our language to make themselves understood in some few
particulars. But we soon perceived these two were great enemies to
one another, and did not always agree in the same story. We could
make a shift to gather out of one of them that this island was very
much infested with a monstrous kind of animals, in the shape of men,
called Whigs; and he often told us that he hoped we should meet with
none of them in our way, for that, if we did, they would be apt to
knock us down for being kings.

"Our other interpreter used to talk very much of a kind of animal
called a Tory, that was as great a monster as the Whig, and would
treat us as ill for being foreigners. These two creatures, it
seems, are born with a secret antipathy to one another, and engage
when they meet as naturally as the elephant and the rhinoceros. But
as we saw none of either of these species, we are apt to think that
our guides deceived us with misrepresentations and fictions, and
amused us with an account of such monsters as are not really in
their country.

"These particulars we made a shift to pick out from the discourse of
our interpreters, which we put together as well as we could, being
able to understand but here and there a word of what they said, and
afterwards making up the meaning of it among ourselves. The men of
the country are very cunning and ingenious in handicraft works, but
withal so very idle, that we often saw young, lusty, raw-boned
fellows carried up and down the streets in little covered rooms by a
couple of porters, who were hired for that service. Their dress is
likewise very barbarous, for they almost strangle themselves about
the neck, and bind their bodies with many ligatures, that we are apt
to think are the occasion of several distempers among them, which
our country is entirely free from. Instead of those beautiful
feathers with which we adorn our heads, they often buy up a
monstrous bush of hair, which covers their heads, and falls down in
a large fleece below the middle of their backs, with which they walk
up and down the streets, and are as proud of it as if it was of
their own growth.

"We were invited to one of their public diversions, where we hoped
to have seen the great men of their country running down a stag, or
pitching a bar, that we might have discovered who were the persons
of the greatest abilities among them; but instead of that, they
conveyed us into a huge room lighted up with abundance of candles,
where this lazy people sat still above three hours to see several
feats of ingenuity performed by others, who it seems were paid for
it.

"As for the women of the country, not being able to talk with them,
we could only make our remarks upon them at a distance. They let
the hair of their heads grow to a great length; but as the men make
a great show with heads of hair that are none of their own, the
women, who they say have very fine heads of hair, tie it up in a
knot, and cover it from being seen. The women look like angels, and
would be more beautiful than the sun, were it not for little black
spots that are apt to break out in their faces, and sometimes rise
in very odd figures. I have observed that those little blemishes
wear off very soon; but when they disappear in one part of the face,
they are very apt to break out in another, insomuch that I have seen
a spot upon the forehead in the afternoon which was upon the chin in
the morning."

The author then proceeds to show the absurdity of breeches and
petticoats, with many other curious observations, which I shall
reserve for another occasion: I cannot, however, conclude this
paper without taking notice that amidst these wild remarks there now
and then appears something very reasonable. I cannot likewise
forbear observing, that we are all guilty in some measure of the
same narrow way of thinking which we meet with in this abstract of
the Indian journal, when we fancy the customs, dresses, and manners
of other countries are ridiculous and extravagant if they do not
resemble those of our own.

THE VISION OF MARRATON.

Felices errore suo. -
LUCAN i. 454.

Happy in their mistake.

The Americans believe that all creatures have souls, not only men
and women, but brutes, vegetables, nay, even the most inanimate
things, as stocks and stones. They believe the same of all works of
art, as of knives, boats, looking-glasses; and that, as any of these
things perish, their souls go into another world, which is inhabited
by the ghosts of men and women. For this reason they always place
by the corpse of their dead friend a bow and arrows, that he may
make use of the souls of them in the other world, as he did of their
wooden bodies in this. How absurd soever such an opinion as this
may appear, our European philosophers have maintained several
notions altogether as improbable. Some of Plato's followers, in
particular, when they talk of the world of ideas, entertain us with
substances and beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many
Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their
substantial forms. I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who, in
his dissertation upon the loadstone, observing that fire will
destroy its magnetic virtues, tells us that he took particular
notice of one as it lay glowing amidst a heap of burning coals, and
that he perceived a certain blue vapour to arise from it, which he
believed might be the substantial form that is, in our West Indian
phrase, the soul of the loadstone.

There is a tradition among the Americans that one of their
countrymen descended in a vision to the great repository of souls,
or, as we call it here, to the other world; and that upon his return
he gave his friends a distinct account of everything he saw among
those regions of the dead. A friend of mine, whom I have formerly
mentioned, prevailed upon one of the interpreters of the Indian
kings to inquire of them, if possible, what tradition they have
among them of this matter: which, as well as he could learn by
those many questions which he asked them at several times, was in
substance as follows:

The visionary, whose name was Marraton, after having travelled for a
long space under a hollow mountain, arrived at length on the
confines of this world of spirits, but could not enter it by reason
of a thick forest, made up of bushes, brambles, and pointed thorns,
so perplexed and interwoven with one another that it was impossible
to find a passage through it. Whilst he was looking about for some
track or pathway that might be worn in any part of it, he saw a huge
lion couched under the side of it, who kept his eye upon him in the
same posture as when he watches for his prey. The Indian
immediately started back, whilst the lion rose with a spring, and
leaped towards him. Being wholly destitute of all other weapons, he
stooped down to take up a huge stone in his hand, but, to his
infinite surprise, grasped nothing, and found the supposed stone to
be only the apparition of one. If he was disappointed on this side,
he was as much pleased on the other, when he found the lion, which
had seized on his left shoulder, had no power to hurt him, and was
only the ghost of that ravenous creature which it appeared to be.
He no sooner got rid of his impotent enemy, but he marched up to the
wood, and, after having surveyed it for some time, endeavoured to
press into one part of it that was a little thinner than the rest,
when, again to his great surprise, he found the bushes made no
resistance, but that he walked through briars and brambles with the
same ease as through the open air, and, in short, that the whole
wood was nothing else but a wood of shades. He immediately
concluded that this huge thicket of thorns and brakes was designed
as a kind of fence or quickset hedge to the ghosts it inclosed, and
that probably their soft substances might be torn by these subtile
points and prickles, which were too weak to make any impressions in
flesh and blood. With this thought he resolved to travel through
this intricate wood, when by degrees he felt a gale of perfumes
breathing upon him, that grew stronger and sweeter in proportion as
he advanced. He had not proceeded much further, when he observed
the thorns and briers to end, and give place to a thousand beautiful
green trees, covered with blossoms of the finest scents and colours,
that formed a wilderness of sweets, and were a kind of lining to
those ragged scenes which he had before passed through. As he was
coming out of this delightful part of the wood, and entering upon
the plains it enclosed, he saw several horsemen rushing by him, and
a little while after heard the cry of a pack of dogs. He had not
listened long before he saw the apparition of a milk-white steed,
with a young man on the back of it, advancing upon full stretch
after the souls of about a hundred beagles, that were hunting down
the ghost of a hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable
swiftness. As the man on the milk-white steed came by him, he
looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young
prince Nicharagua, who died about half a year before, and, by reason
of his great virtues, was at that time lamented over all the western
parts of America.

He had no sooner got out of the wood but he was entertained with
such a landscape of flowery plains, green meadows, running streams,
sunny hills, and shady vales as were not to be represented by his
own expressions, nor, as he said, by the conceptions of others.
This happy region was peopled with innumerable swarms of spirits,
who applied themselves to exercises and diversions, according as
their fancies led them. Some of them were tossing the figure of a
quoit; others were pitching the shadow of a bar; others were
breaking the apparition of a horse; and multitudes employing
themselves upon ingenious handicrafts with the souls of departed
utensils, for that is the name which in the Indian language they
give their tools when they are burnt or broken. As he travelled
through this delightful scene he was very often tempted to pluck the
flowers that rose everywhere about him in the greatest variety and
profusion, having never seen several of them in his own country:
but he quickly found, that though they were objects of his sight,
they were not liable to his touch. He at length came to the side of
a great river, and, being a good fisherman himself, stood upon the
banks of it some time to look upon an angler that had taken a great
many shapes of fishes, which lay flouncing up and down by him.

I should have told my reader that this Indian had been formerly
married to one of the greatest beauties of his country, by whom he
had several children. This couple were so famous for their love and
constancy to one another that the Indians to this day, when they
give a married man joy of his wife, wish that they may live together
like Marraton and Yaratilda. Marraton had not stood long by the
fisherman when he saw the shadow of his beloved Yaratilda, who had
for some time fixed her eye upon him before he discovered her. Her
arms were stretched out towards him; floods of tears ran down her
eyes; her looks, her hands, her voice called him over to her, and,
at the same time, seemed to tell him that the river was unpassable.
Who can describe the passion made up of joy, sorrow, love, desire,
astonishment that rose in the Indian upon the sight of his dear
Yaratilda? He could express it by nothing but his tears, which ran
like a river down his cheeks as he looked upon her. He had not
stood in this posture long before he plunged into the stream that
lay before him, and finding it to be nothing but the phantom of a
river, stalked on the bottom of it till he arose on the other side.
At his approach Yaratilda flew into his arms, whilst Marraton wished
himself disencumbered of that body which kept her from his embraces.
After many questions and endearments on both sides, she conducted
him to a bower, which she had dressed with her own hands with all
the ornaments that could be met with in those blooming regions. She
had made it gay beyond imagination, and was every day adding
something new to it. As Marraton stood astonished at the
unspeakable beauty of her habitation, and ravished with the
fragrancy that came from every part of it, Yaratilda told him that
she was preparing this bower for his reception, as well knowing that
his piety to his God, and his faithful dealing towards men, would
certainly bring him to that happy place whenever his life should be
at an end. She then brought two of her children to him, who died
some years before, and resided with her in the same delightful
bower, advising him to breed up those others which were still with
him in such a manner that they might hereafter all of them meet
together in this happy place.

The tradition tells us further that he had afterwards a sight of
those dismal habitations which are the portion of ill men after
death; and mentions several molten seas of gold, in which were
plunged the souls of barbarous Europeans, who put to the sword so
many thousands of poor Indians for the sake of that precious metal.
But having already touched upon the chief points of this tradition,
and exceeded the measure of my paper, I shall not give any further
account of it.

SIX PAPERS ON WIT.

Ut pictura poesis erit -
HOR., Ars Poet. 361.

Poems like pictures are.

Nothing is so much admired, and so little understood, as wit. No
author that I know of has written professedly upon it. As for those
who make any mention of it, they only treat on the subject as it has
accidentally fallen in their way, and that too in little short
reflections, or in general declamatory flourishes, without entering
into the bottom of the matter. I hope, therefore, I shall perform
an acceptable work to my countrymen if I treat at large upon this
subject; which I shall endeavour to do in a manner suitable to it,
that I may not incur the censure which a famous critic bestows upon
one who had written a treatise upon "the sublime," in a low
grovelling style. I intend to lay aside a whole week for this
undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be broken and
interrupted; and I dare promise myself, if my readers will give me a
week's attention, that this great city will be very much changed for
the better by next Saturday night. I shall endeavour to make what I
say intelligible to ordinary capacities; but if my readers meet with
any paper that in some parts of it may be a little out of their
reach, I would not have them discouraged, for they may assure
themselves the next shall be much clearer.

As the great and only end of these my speculations is to banish vice
and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain, I shall
endeavour, as much as possible, to establish among us a taste of
polite writing. It is with this view that I have endeavoured to set
my readers right in several points relating to operas and tragedies,
and shall, from time to time, impart my notions of comedy, as I
think they may tend to its refinement and perfection. I find by my
bookseller, that these papers of criticism, with that upon humour,
have met with a more kind reception than indeed I could have hoped
for from such subjects; for which reason I shall enter upon my
present undertaking with greater cheerfulness.

In this, and one or two following papers, I shall trace out the
history of false wit, and distinguish the several kinds of it as
they have prevailed in different ages of the world. This I think
the more necessary at present, because I observed there were
attempts on foot last winter to revive some of those antiquated
modes of wit that have been long exploded out of the commonwealth of
letters. There were several satires and panegyrics handed about in
an acrostic, by which means some of the most arrant undisputed
blockheads about the town began to entertain ambitious thoughts, and
to set up for polite authors. I shall therefore describe at length
those many arts of false wit, in which a writer does not show
himself a man of a beautiful genius, but of great industry.

The first species of false wit which I have met with is very
venerable for its antiquity, and has produced several pieces which
have lived very near as long as the "Iliad" itself: I mean, those
short poems printed among the minor Greek poets, which resemble the
figure of an egg, a pair of wings, an axe, a shepherd's pipe, and an
altar.

As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not improperly
be called a scholar's egg. I would endeavour to hatch it, or, in
more intelligible language, to translate it into English, did not I
find the interpretation of it very difficult; for the author seems
to have been more intent upon the figure of his poem than upon the
sense of it.

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